R720xd internal Sata

Hello 

I have two Poweredge R720xd I recently purchased to run Truenas on.  The install was going pretty well until I needed to install the Truenas OS on to a drive and then boot from it.  I had a ssd installed into the rear backplane caddie.  Was able to install the OS without an issue.  However when I attempted to boot the drive it was not able to be seen by the bios and the machine looked as if there was no boot drive present.  Part of the Truenas install is to reflash the H710 radi controller to IT mode. Im guessing this took out the bios's ability to see any drives on the backplane.  Is there a way to use the BIOS or UEFI to somehow boot from a drive on the rear or front back plane when the H710 is in IT mode?  I have yet to find a way, but I am a complete novice when it comes to these servers.  

So my second idea is to instead install a PCIe M.2 NVMe drive and a NVMe drive.  This has not gone so well either.  I cant get the Bios to see the drive when used the NVMe in the PCIe position on the card, nor can I get either of the two SATA ports on the MB to see the NVMe drive when its in the SATA connector on the card with the cable connected to either of the two(blue or white) SATA ports.  So Im not sure what to do.  I would really like to get one or both of those internal sata ports to work.  I was guessing that maybe the MB would disable the two sata ports if it saw the backplane.  Im guessing that is not the case as I disconnected all the cable to the backplane and it still would not recognize the NVMe in the sata configuration on the PCIe card.  

Im about to go to a USB to NVMe and use the internal USB connector and put the NVMe SSD on that thing, but it rubs me the wrong way to have a SSD accessed through a usb interface.  Plus the general reliability of it.  

If anyone has any ideas here I would appreciate the help!!  Any way to get the sata ports enabled on the R720xd.

Thank you 

Matt